Dreidels & Do-Overs

By Kim Fielding

Caleb Stern was the high school hotshot, but a bad attitude and poor decisions led to years of misery. Now he's trying to do better, and a job on the cleaning crew at a holiday craft fair could be a new beginning. What he didn't expect was that his new start might be tangled up with ties from long ago.

Jasper Adams left an unfulfilling career and unsupportive boyfriend to follow his dreams. His handmade journals are a big success at the craft fair, which is great, but the real holiday miracle turns out to be a blast from his past.

Hanukkah nears, and both men yearn for holiday happiness. But moving forward often means first making peace with where you've been.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tin Box Press
• Release date: Nov 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223237655

Kim Fielding

Kim Fielding is pleased every time someone calls her eclectic. Her books span a variety of genres, but all include authentic voices and unconventional heroes. She’s a Rainbow Award and SARA Emma Merritt winner, a LAMBDA finalist, and a two-time Foreword INDIE finalist. She has migrated back and forth across the western two-thirds of the United States and currently lives in California, where she long ago ran out of bookshelf space. A university professor who dreams of being able to travel and write full-time, she also dreams of having two daughters who occasionally get off their phones, a husband who isn’t obsessed with football, and a cat who doesn’t wake her up at 4:00 a.m. Some dreams are more easily obtained than others. Blogs: kfieldingwrites.com and www.goodreads.com/author/show/4105707.Kim_Fielding/blog Facebook: www.facebook.com/KFieldingWrites Email: [e-mail] Twitter: @KFieldingWrites

Book preview

1

S tern, stop screwing around.

Caleb gave a guilty start, turned, and nodded apologetically at his boss. Sorry, Mr. Marquez. It’s a lot to take in.

Mr. Marquez seemed to agree. The Pacific Northwest Hotel’s big conference hall, which was normally occupied by nothing more exciting than trade shows for petroleum geologists, had taken on the look of a European Christmas market. Hundreds of booths covered the floor in orderly rows, all offering handicrafts guaranteed to delight entire gift lists. Carols trilled over the loudspeakers, strings of colored lights hung from the rafters, and plastic trees covered in fake snow loomed in corners. The air smelled of fried dough, spiced cider, and sausages.

You shoulda seen what it looked like when we opened the doors this morning, said Mr. Marquez. It got so crowded you could hardly walk down the aisles. Be glad you pulled the second shift.

Caleb was grateful; fewer people meant fewer messes for him to deal with and less garbage to haul away. He’d have to work on the more thorough cleanup after the show shut down for the day, but that was all right.

Sorry, he said again. I’ll stop gawking.

Caleb had heard that Mr. Marquez was a good boss who didn’t mind if some of his employees were a little rough around the edges. As long as they did their jobs and treated him with respect, he treated them kindly and tried to get them as many paid hours as he could. Go ahead and empty the trash cans near the west food court, then you can take a thirty-minute break. Put your feet up—or maybe get in some holiday shopping.

It was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, but the food booths were busy anyway. People munched on bratwurst, potato wedges swimming in melted cheese, gingerbread cookies, giant pretzels, donuts, miniature pies, and other treats. Caleb’s stomach growled, but it shut up once he began tying up giant garbage bags full of wrappers and leftovers, dumping them into his cart. The volume of waste was a shame.

It took four trips to empty all the trash bins, and by then they were beginning to fill up again. It reminded him of a story he’d read in high school English, over two decades earlier, about some ancient Greek guy who pissed off the gods and was forced to spend eternity pushing a rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down again. Caleb had plenty of misdeeds in his past, so maybe endless garbage detail was part of his punishment.

But then one of his co-workers, a grandmotherly woman named Dolores, ambled over. Boss says you’re on break.

There was a break room behind a door at the back of the hall, a comfortable space boasting vending machines, coffee pots, and an assortment of outdated and scuffed hotel tables and chairs. There was a TV too, which Mr. Marquez alternated between telenovelas, ESPN, and Animal Planet. But just walking there would waste a good five minutes. Besides, Caleb’s curiosity spurred him to browse the stalls.

Slightly self-conscious in his janitorial khakis, Caleb strolled the nearest aisle. He could have spent hours gawking at the items for sale—jewelry, ceramics, hand-knitted goods, paintings, glassware. One guy was selling beautiful little boxes carved from exotic woods. A woman had a booth full of Christmas ornaments made from old silverware. He’d been told that this was one of the most prestigious holiday craft fairs in the country and that many vendors spent years on the waitlist before being given a spot. Some of the visitors flew in from other states, arranging entire vacations around shopping at this fair.

The booth that brought him to a halt displayed paper goods. Clever little sketches of people and animals hung on the temporary walls, and a few tables held an assortment of beautiful journals, no two of them alike. Caleb allowed his gaze to linger on each of the tooled leather covers.

Can I help you?

When Caleb had approached the booth, the vendor was in the middle of completing a sale to a pair of women in their twenties, but now they were gone and he was smiling at Caleb from behind a table.

I didn’t touch anything, Caleb blurted.

The man chuckled. You can if you want. I try to make sure my books won’t self-destruct on contact.

Caleb had worn disposable gloves while emptying the garbage, but he still didn’t feel especially clean. So he just shook his head. They’re gorgeous.

Thanks. I like to think that a nice cover and fancy paper give people inspiration for their writing or sketches. That’s why the name. He gestured toward a banner Caleb hadn’t noticed. The Portable Muse.

That’s a good name. And then, as the vendor continued to look at him, Caleb gave an embarrassed shrug. Sorry to take up your time. I’m just sort of…. It’s my break.

"Look around all you want. I like it when people admire my work. That’s one of the reasons I do this fair. I sell most of my stuff online, but that doesn’t give me the chance to talk to people and listen to them